Six social network-based phones we'll never see (pictures)

Facebook isn't making a phone after all, and neither should these social networks. We explain why these six social networks should stay out of the smartphone game.

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A Twitter phone is for the birds

Twitter's Michael Sippey hasn't dismissed the notion of creating something similar to Facebook Home, which seems to be further confirmation that the notion of a smartphone with a single social network at the core of its hardware is all but dead.

Most popular social networks have at least one major character flaw that prevents a smartphone version from making much sense.

In the case of Twitter, the constant pace of notifications of new incoming tweets would threaten to cause a new pandemic of "Tweet neck," and we'd face a new security crisis after we all begin mixing up hashtags with punching in our PIN numbers followed by the "#" sign.

Unpin Pinterest phone dreams

A Pinterest phone could make for a wonderful, visual mobile sharing and browsing experience... which is exactly why it's so critical that it never comes to pass.

Can you imagine the escalating scourge of distracted driving with a whole new population of drivers gawking at mouth-watering shots of spaghetti alla carbonara with sweet peas, or coveting this Minecraft mug?

YouTube phone? Not for me.

On its face, the idea of a YouTube phone kind of makes sense. You could make the argument that Android phones (Google runs both Android and YouTube) already are a sort of YouTube phone. But how horrifying would the notion of a YouTube-centered phone be?

Sure, easy access to videos of sloths with kittens is great, but do you really want the majority of your notifications to come from trolls buzzing you in the middle of the night to let you know that your daughter "totaly sux at T_ball" followed by a stream of nonsensical or inapplicable yet still horrible epithets?

Reddit phone an alien concept

The case against a Reddit phone is pretty clear. If this site's design capabilities carry over into the hardware world, it's likely to end up looking like a brick phone from the 1980s -- or an actual brick. Plus, do you really want a phone that would love nothing more than to dox you?

Kickstarter phone in backer's back pocket?

The problem with a Kickstarter phone is pretty self-explanatory. By the time your college friend's startup, that you gave too much money to in exchange for an "early model" of the device, actually gets around to sending the phone to you years later, we'll all have ditched our smartphones for Google Glass.

THE ULTIMATE iOS 10 GUIDE

iOS 10: All the new features, tips and guides

iOS 10 is here. Even though it looks just like iOS 9, a lot of features are radically different. Messages is a lot more like Facebook Messenger, the lock screen packs a lot more info, and you can finally delete Apple's default apps.